The modern communications era has brought about a tremendous expansion of wireline and wireless networks. Computer networks, television networks, and telephony networks are experiencing an unprecedented technological expansion, fueled by consumer demand. Wireless and mobile networking technologies have addressed related consumer demands, while providing more flexibility and immediacy of information transfer.
Current and future networking technologies continue to facilitate ease of information transfer and convenience to users. One area in which there is a demand to further improve the convenience to users is the internetworking of two operator networks, such as may occur when a first terminal device initiates a communication session with a second terminal device residing on a different operator network. Such a communication initiation may occur, for example, during use of voice over internet protocol (VoIP). In this regard, for example, a first terminal device may reside on a local operator network and a second terminal device may reside on a remote operator network. The first terminal device may have an assigned private internet protocol (IP) address within the local operator network which devices residing on the local operator network may use to initiate communications with the first terminal device. However, the second terminal device may not directly initiate communications with the first terminal device using the private IP address. Instead, a network address translation (NAT) must temporarily bind the first terminal device's private IP address with a public IP address accessible by the second terminal device so that the second terminal device may initiate communications with the first terminal device.
In prior networks, the local operator network may use one or more session initiation protocol (SIP) proxy devices as communication intermediaries to receive queries from the second terminal device for the address of the first terminal device. In this regard, the SIP proxy device may query a peer-to-peer session initiation protocol (P2PSIP) network containing private IP address data in a distributed database, such as, for example, a distributed hash table (DHT), for terminal devices on the local operator network for the private IP address assigned to the first terminal device. The P2PSIP network is comprised of a plurality of peer nodes that are assigned private IP addresses and thus are not transparent to the second terminal device. The proxy device may then create a binding at a NAT of the local operator between the private IP address and a public IP address accessible by the second terminal device and provide the public IP address to the second terminal device so that the second terminal device may initiate communications with the first terminal device.
In such prior networks, the SIP proxy devices and NATs may become bottlenecks as all communication requests must be routed through them rather than through the peer nodes of the P2PSIP network. It may be desirable to eliminate this bottleneck. Accordingly, it may be advantageous to provide computing device users with methods, apparatuses, and computer program products for facilitating establishing a communications session.